Thrifty town no more. San Francisco’s beloved Thrift Town is gone

A victim of increased costs and slumping sales, Thrift Town has closed its doors after 45 years.

On Tuesday, Mission Mission broke the news that the beloved Mission thrift store, 2101 Mission at 17th Street, was closing citing a tipster who said Thrift Town’s last day of business was Friday. However, the store ended up shuttering days earlier, sometime on Wednesday.

A visit to the store around 5:30 p.m. found a small group of people standing outside Thrift Town’s locked front gate lamenting the store’s loss and reading a note from the management posted in the front window. Fliers reading “I left my heart at Thrift Town San Francisco” were plastered on the front and a man who showed up and said he was an employee there to pick up his final check.

Management’s type note, which lists an initial closing date of the 31st that was crossed out and replaced with the 29th, said the management worked with the landlord, who gave them a rent reduction, but it wasn’t enough to compensate for lagging sales.

“The retail landscape is changing drastically and despite our exhaustive efforts to meet the on-going challenges of increased costs and declining sales, we are unable [to] generate the sales necessary to sustain our long-standing business in San Francisco. We have fought hard to save our beautiful San Francisco store because we deeply believe in our people, our community and our mission” the note reads.

“The building’s ownership has been very helpful and has tried very hard to work with us on ways to keep our doors open including a rent reduction. However insufficient sales and increasing external costs made Thrift Town’s situation unsustainable.”

Here is the whole message from Thrift Town management:

It is with heavy heart that we share that Thrift Town – San Francisco is closed as of 3/29/2017. Thrift Town is a 45-year-old family business that is fully committed to our shared vision of making a difference every day.

We have probably been a part of the San Francisco community since 1972, and we are grateful for each and every customer who has shopped our fabulous two-story, iconic Thrift Town store located in the heart of the Mission District. The memories are many and nobody is sadder than us.

The retail landscape is changing drastically and despite our exhaustive efforts to meet the on-going challenges of increased costs and declining sales, we are unable [to] generate the sales necessary to sustain our long-standing business in San Francisco. We have fought hard to save our beautiful San Francisco store because we deeply believe in our people, our community and our mission.

The building’s ownership has been very helpful and has tried very hard to work with us on ways to keep our doors open including a rent reduction. However insufficient sales and increasing external costs made Thrift Town’s situation unsustainable.

Thrift Town is not going out of business. Its five additional California locations, including two in the East Bay and three in the Sacramento area, will remain open. Thrift Town also has stores in Texas and New Mexico which continue to thrive. Thrift Town’s San Francisco employees will be encouraged to apply for positions in one of our other locations should that option suit their circumstances.

We greatly appreciate the dedication of our crew and the loyalty of the San Francisco community over these past four and a half decades. Together, we have truly made an impact on our local community by keeping millions of pounds of usable items out of our local landfills, and helping to raise over 23 million dollars of much-needed funding for our local nonprofit partners, past and present including The Arc San Francisco, Life-house, and Big Brothers, Big Sisters of the Bay Area.

We will miss San Francisco, our crew, customers and community greatly. We salute everyone for their time, commitment, dedication and loyalty to Thrift Town over the past many years.

Sincerely,

Thrift Town Management
Norquist Salvage Corporation.